INDENTURED LABOUR IN THE COLONIAL TEA PALANTATIONS OF ASSAM: A SAGA OF EXPLOITATION, SUFFERINGS AND COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE

1773

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INDENTURED LABOUR IN THE COLONIAL TEA

PALANTATIONS OF ASSAM: A SAGA OF

EXPLOITATION, SUFFERINGS AND

COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE

Biresh Chaudhuri

Research Scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

Assistant Professor, Department Of History, Satyawati College, University Of Delhi

Abstract: This article of mine examines the development of indentured labor plantations in the

colonial tea gardens of Assam. The laborers were recruited through licensed recruiters and most of

them came from Chotanagpur region. The notion of the Adivasi coolie having the capacity to perform

arduous tasks was becoming popular. Subsequently, this article examines the exploitation and

sufferings inherent in the system of indenture and how these manifested into forms of collective

violence and large scale desertions in the tea gardens. This is an original work bereft of any sort of

plagiarism whatsoever and has not been sent for publishing anywhere. This study has been based

predominantly upon secondary sources with primary sources in the National Archives of India and

Assam State Archives and a few reports and conference proceedings.

Key Words: Coolies, Adivasis, Arkattus, Jungle, Junglee, Dustoor, Izzat.

INTRODUCTION

The plantation complex in Asia in the nineteenth century differed from the older

Atlantic plantations in one particular aspect: they did not have a history of slave based

production. The similarity between both the plantation systems lay in the high capitalist

nature of organization. With regard to the matter of labor use, indentured servitude in

one form or the other was the predominant mode of labor in both the systems. Under

this system, the laborers were hired on contract basis for working in plantations and

used to be transported over a long distance, often leading to various hardships being

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Biresh Chaudhuri- INDENTURED LABOUR IN THE COLONIAL TEA PALANTATIONS OF ASSAM: A SAGA

OF EXPLOITATION, SUFFERINGS AND COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE

1774 AMERICAN RESEARCH THOUGHTS- Volume 1 │ Issue 7 │2015

suffered by them during the course of the journey. The most important aspect of

indentured labor was the provision that breach of contract was considered a criminal

offense and entailed criminal prosecution, with the planters being given the penal

sanctions. This aspect of un-freedom that has also been characterized as ‘a new system

of slavery’ that was at the heart of this entire system of indentured labor. Revisionist

historians like Donald Galenson have underplayed this concept of un-freedom by

placing emphasis on the economic rationality of the system by assuming that it was

beneficial for both the planters and the laborers. The factors like attraction of economic

opportunities and hopes of bettering their future were sufficient to prompt many

migrants to enter indentures giving up much of their freedomi. But the Revisionist

historians have tended to remain silent about the conditions of unfreedom inherent in

the indentured labor system. Their idea of emphasizing the benefits of plantation

system and ignoring its hazardous implications seems somewhat similar to the

contemporary defenders of the plantations, namely the planters themselves who owned

these plantations. The point which needs to be emphasized in this regard is that these

plantations were not designed so much to provide economic opportunities to the

laborers as to secure for the planters a labor force whose wages were determined by the

planters themselves and not by the labor market. The low wage indentured labour was

used to inhibit the bargaining power of the laborers and guaranteed a substantial

measure of planter control over the entire labor processii. Such an oppressive system

was bound to create unrest among the laborers and gradually this unrest used to get

manifested in the form of collective resistance by the laborers, particularly with regards

to the Assam Tea Plantations, as we shall discuss in this article.

Tea in the classic colonial representations symbolized the transformation of a

backward province ridden by jungles through the colonization of British enterprise and

capital. Assam was annexed into British India during the 1830’s since it was necessary

for the East India Company to sustain its tea trade in the wake of the Opium War in

China. The ending of the trade monopoly of the Company made it imperative to seek

new avenues of tea production. Through a series of investigations in the late 18th and

early 19th centuries, it was revealed that tea could be grown successfully in this region

for commercial purposes. The Government of India was initially a bit skeptical about

the success of such a venture in India. Nevertheless, on January 1834, a Committee was

appointed at the behest of Lord William Bentinck to explore the possibilities of tea

cultivation. The Committee in its report later that year described this region as ‘to be by




far the most important discovery that has been made in matters connected with the

agricultural and commercial resources of the British Empireiii.

The feasibility of tea cultivation and the favorable response to the earliest

specimens of Assam tea in the markets of Calcutta and London created enormous

interest among the investors and capitalists. The first commercial enterprise was set up

in 1839 in London, known as the Assam Tea Company. This Company was looking to

take over the plantations of the East India Company. The Government too extended all

sorts of help to the newly formed Company by transferring almost two thirds of the

experimental tea gardens to it and ensured the availability of lands. Huge tracts of

jungle lands and even areas under cultivation were designated as wastelands and

handed out to the company at nominal rates. For this purpose, special rules on land

grants were introduced by the colonial government from time to time. Gradually, under

the benevolent disposition of the ‘Planter Raj’, the industry made rapid strides and soon

displaced China as the principal exporter of tea to Britain, by the end of the 19th

centuryiv. The cultivation of tea in Assam was mainly carried out in the Brahamaputra

river valley in the districts of Lakhimpur, Darrang, Nowgong, Sibsagar and Kamrup. In

addition, the districts of Cachar and Sylhet (now a part of Bangladesh) in Surma Valley

too were involved in the production of tea.

By 1860, only six companies were registered in Assam and 51 tea gardens were in

operation. The success of the Assam Tea Company attracted a host of investments from

1860 onwards. Between 1860 and 1865, the tea prices nearly doubled while the profits

soared sky high which encouraged reckless speculative investments. As many as 86

Companies were registered for tea cultivation during these 5 years. This spate of

speculative investments was termed as ‘Tea Mania.’v

After 1965, there was a brief period of hiccup, when the boom in the tea industry

broke suddenly leading to depression in tea prices and shares. This situation continued

till 1870 after which, there was again an era of uninterrupted growth in the tea industry

albeit in a period of falling prices. There were three major features in the growth of the

tea industry after 1870. Firstly, the structure of the tea industry was rationalized by

which the control over the management of the tea gardens was transferred to the British

managing agency houses. The process was initiated by the Assam Tea Company which

placed its gardens under the management of certain private companies like James

Finley and Co., Barry and Co., Kilbern and Co. etc. These managing houses controlled

nearly 61% of all tea gardens in Assam by the end of the 19th century. Secondly,




majority of the expansion of the tea industry after 1870 was not financed by Britain’s

savings, rather by investments that were made by the British residents in India, who

became plantation ownersvi. Thirdly, a large part of the expansion of the tea industry

took place in a period of steadily falling prices post-1870. All these features had an

important bearing on the structure of recruitment of indentured labor.

A critical aspect of for the growth of tea industry was the mobilization of labor.

Assam province at that time was sparsely populated and there was an absence of a

substantial class of agricultural laborers. The native Assamese were considered strong

impediments in the development of tea industry. In the colonial accounts, they were

depicted as being indolent, lazy, addicted to opium and were considered as inefficient

to cope up with the requirements of a labor intensive industry. Also, the local laborers

demanded high wages. Hence, the planters were forced to look for cheap labor. All

these factors prompted long distance recruiting of laborers. The planters made every

possible effort to secure the support of the colonial state for establishing and

maintaining a system of indentured recruitment with strict penal provisions in Assamvii.

During this time, coolieviii with all its attendant stereotypes, which had been a

fashion in the overseas colonial plantations particularly in Fiji and Caribbean, was being

increasingly mobilized by the tea planters of Assam. These coolies were looked upon as

ideal labor for tea gardens, most explicitly expressed in the racialized sociology of labor,

where the coolie, especially the tribal jungle (a native of forest) stood for docility and

capability for hard manual labor as against the laziness of the native.

The coolies predominantly came from the tribal districts of Chotanagpur,

covering the modern day provinces of Bihar, Bengal, Jharkhand and Orissa. At first the

recruiting was confined to the lower districts of Bengal but gradually the Junglee from

the Chotanagpur region were becoming the most sought after ‘class of coolie.’ix Assam

was considered to fall far beyond the mental and physical domain of the tribal or

adivasi coolie. In order to mobilize this class of laborers, planters mainly operated

through an agency of labor contractors, who in turn depended upon a class of coolie

catchers, known as the arkattis, in order to induce these tribals to go to Assam. These

coolies were brought from their native districts to Calcutta and from their dispatched to

Assam or Cachar by boat. These poor coolies had to bear the brunt of a long and arduous

journey under conditions of extreme insanitation and consequently many of them used

to die on the way. The mortality rate in the transportation of laborers to Assam reached




up to 50% in some casesx. Therefore, a need was felt for some kind of a governmental

intervention in order to streamline the entire process of labor recruitment.

A Special Committee was appointed by the Government of Bengal in 1862 to

enquire into the state of affairs in the tea gardens. The early operations of arkattis were

depicted as a harrowing saga of deception, desertion and death. Undoubtedly, the

coolies needed protection by way of governmental intervention. Colonial state

intervention in the recruitment of indentured labor can be dated to 1863 when on the

recommendation of the Special Committee; the Transport of Native Laborers Act III was

passed. The Act provided for licensing of all recruiters, medical examination of every

emigrant and adequate sanitary arrangements in the conveyance of labor. Emigrants

had to be registered before the District Magistrate and placed on contract not exceeding

5 yearsxi.

The Planters Act VI of 1865 introduced the system of penal contract for the first

time. Minimum monthly wages were fixed at Rs. 5 for men and Rs. 4 for women. In

addition, 3 year contract, nine hour work day and a government inspector of labor

empowered to cancel the contract of laborers on complaints of ill treatment, were also

introduced. The main provision of the Act however lay in the stringent provisions of

breach of contract on part of the laborers. The planters were given the power to arrest

without warrant those laborers who absconded before the expiry of their contract.

Coolies were obliged to work for a specific period for a particular employer in return for

wages. But this was not just going to be any ordinary civil contract but a contract that

contained strict penal provisions including the Right to Private Arrest. It was argued

that the modern notion of contract was incomprehensible to the primitive tribal coolie

and he had to be deterred by strong penal provisions with small doses of coercion and

violence, a language that he best understoodxii. Hence, this stereotyping of a coolie at a

total loss in controlling his life and labor was characteristic of the plantation life.

It has been argued that the right to private arrest inaugurated the system of

indenture or the penal contract system in Assam marked by coercion and physical

torture at the workplace, depression and stagnancy of wages and extremely

authoritarian systems of control. The plantation regime and the system of penal

contracts have been said to have deterred the capacity of the coolie to involve in

collective modes of protest.xiii Development of trade union consciousness and

organization among the tea plantation workers was a delayed phenomenon. The

reasons were not far to seek. Horrid isolation far away from their homes, lack of




education, difficulty in contacting the outside trade union workers and revengeful

attitude of the employers against any such attempt hindered the process. However,

their passion for resistance against humiliation, exploitation etc. committed by the

British planters matured in due course of time into a higher consciousness to safeguard

their collective interests.xiv

Between 1865 and 1882, a period marked by steady growth of tea industry,

recruitment of indentured labor continued to be under governmental supervision while

the penal contract system came into existence in Assam. Although the special labor

legislations mentioned above provided a legal framework for the indenture system in

Assam, the official enquiries of 1868 and 1873 revealed that these failed to guarantee the

statutory minimum wages. Recruitment abuse continued unabated, living and working

conditions remained appealing and above all, despite the official exposures, the colonial

state’s support to the planters remained unstinted.xv

The system of penal contracts to a large extent had a bearing in the articulation of

the authority structure within the Assam Tea Plantations. Authority within the tea

gardens comprised of a hierarchy involving European employees and native staff,

premised chiefly on a strong element of physical violence and coercion backed by legal

rights like that of ‘private arrest.’ The authority within the plantations used to be vested

in the person of the manager, also known as the ‘Burra Sahib.’ For the coolies, the

attractiveness of the estate lay in a feeling of confidence and faith in the management

and the personality of the manager, the sahib who could speak to the laborer in his own

native language and could grant leave on occasion of certain festivals.xvi The authority

within the plantations therefore showed strong paternalistic inclinations.

Coming back to the issue of collective protests, during the year 1896, there was a

change in the management in the tea gardens of Cachar, Sibsagar and Sylhet districts.xvii

Within a few days of this change, there were reports of assaults and attacks on the new

set of leadership, on one instance even the bungalow of the new manager also being

burned down. At times, the coolies also resented any endeavor on part of the new

management to bring about certain changes or introducing new practices in the

plantations. A glaring case of this reaction to a new practice could be seen in 1903 from

the Rowmari Tea Garden at Lakhimpur. Coolies here traditionally used the umbrella

while working in the rain but were now compelled to use jhampis or wide brimmed

hats. The coolies protested against this and attacked the manager, assistant manager and

the head clerk of the garden. Investigations showed that the garden, of late, was




showing signs of strict discipline. The broad rimmed hat would have made the job of

plucking leaves easier as it enabled the coolie to use both hands, something that would

not have been possible by holding an umbrella. The reluctance to this change on part of

the coolies could have been a form of resistance to speed up the production as

demanded by the garden.xviii Few such incidents of resistance to changes were reported

from Sylhet district as well. The colonial officials, reflecting on such incidents of

collisions between employers and coolies observed that although the coolies had very

little or perhaps no knowledge of the rules, they were intimately acquainted with the

local practices or dustoors that had emerged alongside these rules and consequently any

attempt at changing or departing from these dustoors was something which the coolies

resented greatly.xix The evidence that has been cited fits perfectly with the statements.

The coolies used to a particular manager or a particular practice resented changes to it.

Changes in the management were resented because they brought in their wake new

patterns of work and management of labor. On one occasion, a riot was reported in 1916

from Tehapara garden in the Sylhet district. Coolies here were dissatisfied with certain

rules and harsh practices of labor control introduced by the new manager. Provoked by

an incident of assault by the person in question, the entire coolie population of the

garden consisting of men, women and children collected near the dispensary and

confined him along with his assistant in a stable. Bricks and bamboo sticks were pelted

on the detained party.xx

The coolies apart from working in the gardens also indulged in small scale

agriculture on lands which the management rented out to them, as a part of the cost of

reproduction of the workforce borne in the agricultural sector. But during the peak

season of the tea crop when the demand for working hands was the greatest, the coolie

was generally not allowed to indulge in his or her own practices and the management

often used to resort to coercive measures to make them work in the gardens which used

to be protested by the coolies.

At times, these collective protests got linked to the question of honor or izzat. In a

case reported from Alinagar garden (Sylhet) in 1900, the coolies had stopped work and

when the manager came to make enquiries, he was roughed up by the coolies and

severely beaten, because he had snatched the honor or izzat from the coolies. This whole

concept was linked to the coolie women who were seen as the repository of the izzat.xxi In

1889, the manager of Nadua Tea Garden at Lakhimpur too was severely assaulted by

the coolies for an attempt to outrage a coolie girl. In another case reported from Hatikuri




Tea Estate (Cachar) in 1913, a collective assault was made on the assistant engineer who

despite objections, used to inspect the leaves plucked by the women coolies collected in

clothes worn around their waists, something which had led to grave dissatisfaction

among the coolies.xxii

However it was not just the case of sexual exploitation but their oppression at the

workplace that often led to a collective sense of illegitimacy of such acts, provoking

communal action. On one particular occasion, a coolie woman was assaulted by the

manager for disobedience of orders in Silghat tea garden at Nowgong in 1890.

Following this, around 40 coolies attacked the manager and beat him severely. In

another case reported from Koliapani garden (Sibsagar, 1905), the manager while

inspecting the work grabbed a tribal girl by her ear and forced her to a place where she

was supposed to work. Upon seeing this, 4-5 coolies working nearby came and

confronted the manager by asking – ‘Ki katri mai ke marile?’ (Why did you beat up the

girl?) Soon 30 more people surrounded him and what followed was an assault on the

manager by sticks and clods. The manager fled to his bungalow which then came under

heavy siege from about 150 coolies, hurling pieces of wood like missiles.xxiii One can

therefore clearly understand the dynamics of how a small act of assault on a coolie girl

could provoke communal anxieties for heir izzat being threatened and manifest in the

form of a major collective action.

A major feature of the resistance of the coolies was the strong element of physical

violence involved. Apart from physical attack, appliances such as hoes, furrows, sticks

etc became major weapons during these assaults on the plantation officials. Since

physical abuse and torture was an integral part of the disciplining process of the

authority in the plantations therefore in cases of assault by officials on individuals

which at times were deemed as excessive, it led to an inversion and recasting of the

violence and abusive behavior often manifested on the managers, whose acts of

coercion met with organized opposition. On the caning of a coolie by a new manager in

one of the gardens of Lakhimpur district in 1884, the rest of the coolies beat him up

severely. In 1918, when a coolie boy was slapped in Namgaon tea garden in Darrang

district for causing disturbance, the coolies attacked the manager and wrecked the office

building.xxiv

It is interesting to note that sometimes these moments of defiance did not just

involve the particular individual who had the authority but the symbols of authority

like bungalow, tea-house, European and native staff etc.




At times, the modes of expression were not only limited to violent confrontational

attacks on the authority or its symbols but also the collective will to leave the gardens.

In Mesaijan tea gardens (Lakhimpur, 1888), a large body of coolies left the garden

extremely upset because of the brutal treatment meted out to three coolie women of the

garden. They arrived at the office of the Deputy Commissioner and complained that

three women had been ties to a post in the porch of the manager’s house, their clothes

were lifted up to their waists and then they had been flogged on the bare buttocks with

a leather stirrup on the orders of the Assistant manager. While two of them had been

flogged for desertion, one of them was punished for short work.xxv Often such cases of

withdrawal of work and the decision to desert the gardens en-masse were not only due

to specific grievances but the lack of faith on the garden authorities to resolve such

concerns and so it was considered to be futile to indulge in a negotiatory process with

them and appeal to a different set of authority, the likes of the Commissioner or Deputy

Commissioner. At least two cases were heard of in the second decade of the twentieth

century that involved coolies deserting the gardens in large numbers to appeal to the

higher authorities of their grievances. In 1920, the coolies of Denan tea garden (Cachar)

left the garden in large numbers. The manager tried to stop them forcibly but he was

attacked and beaten in retaliation. On being stopped by the police they said that they

were proceeding towards Silchar to complain to the Magistrate about their short and

inadequate pay.xxvi In 1911, the coolies of Namrup tea gardens (Lakhimpur) left the

gardens in large numbers intending to proceed to Dibrugarh and complain against the

manager who refused to give them bonus. When the manager tried to catch hold of one

of them, he was attacked.xxvii

CONCLUSION

The migrant coolies in the Assam Tea Plantations who were recruited mainly from the

tribal areas of Chotanagpur over a period showed a change in their perceptions and

experiences of life and work. Examining their collective forms of protests and the

articulation of authority, it can be argued that the structure of the authority within the

gardens backed by legal and coercive powers vested in the person of the manager was

not just premised on the brute force and oppression but were also brought into play

through traditional and cultural idioms of legitimacy. Dustoor represented a collective

sense of material well-being and any forceful or dramatic deviation from that provoked




collective protests. The issues around which these protests revolved ranged from

gender, social and cultural violence and oppression to workplace grievances. The

nature of collective protest revealed a strong element of physical violence, informed by

the dimensions of the modes of control with a strong element of physicality and abusive

behavior. However it was not just violent and confrontational expressions which

characterized the collective modes of protest, but at times, there was a mass withdrawal

of work that demonstrated a sense of futility to engage in a negotiatory process.

REFERENCES

Primary sources

1) Home Department, Police Branch Records in National Archives of India, New Delhi

and Revenue Records in Assam State Archives, Dispur

Articles in Journals

1) Galenson, Donald. 1984. ‚The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude: An Economic

Analysis.‛ Journal of Economic History 44:27.

2) Gupta, S. Chatterjee and Ratan Das. 1981. ‚Tea Labour in Assam: Recruitment and

Governmental Policy, 1840-80.‛ Economic and Political Weekly 16:44-46.

3) Mohapatra, Rana P. Behal and Prabhu P. 1992. ‚Tea and Money Versus Human Life:

The Rise and Fall of The Indenture System in the Assam Tea Plantations, 1840-1908.‛

Journal of Peasant Studies 19:3-4.

4) Siddique, M.A.B. 1985. ‚The Labour Market and the Growth of the Tea Industry in

India, 1840-1900.‛ Journal of South Asia 18:86.

Conference Proceedings

1) ‚Handbook of Caste and Tribes Employed on Tea Estates in North East India.‛

Indian Tea Association. Calcutta, 1924. 5.

2) ‚Resolution on Immigrant Labour in Assam for the year 1918-1919.‛

Reports

1) Report of Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the State and Prospects of Tea

Cultivation in Assam, Cachar and Sylhet.‛ Calcutta, 1868.




Secondary Sources

1) Bagchi, A.K. 1972. Private Investment in India. London: Cambridge Universiity Press.

2) Das, R. 1931. Plantation Labour in India. Calcutta: University of Calcutta.

3) Gait, Edward. 1926. A History of Assam. Calcutta: Spink & Company.

4) Ghosh, Kaushik. 1999. ''A Market for Aboriginality: Primitivism and Race Classification

in the Indentured Labour Market of Colonial India.'' In Subaltern Studies, Vol. 10, edited

by Gyan Prakash and Susie Tharu Gautam Bhadra, 67. New Delhi: Oxford

University Press.

5) Griffiths, P.C. 1967. The History of The Indian Tea Industry. London: Weidenfeld and

Nicolson.

6) Sen, Sukomal. 1997. Working Class of India: History of Emergence and Movement, 1830-

1990. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi and Company.

7) Varma, Nitin. 2011. ‚Coolie Strikes Back: Collective Protest and Action in the

Colonial Tea Plantations of Assam, 1880-1920.‛ In Adivasis in Colonial India, edited by

Biswamoy Pati, 187. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.

iGalenson 1984, 27 iiBehal and Mohapatra 1992, 3-4 iiiVarma 2011, 187 ivGait 1926, 409 vGriffiths 1967, 61-99 viBagchi 1972, 176 viiBehal and Mohapatra 1992, 12 viiiIn English, this particular term ‘Coolie’ signifies a porter. With regard to the plantations, Coolie was a term used

predominantly for the plantation workers. This identity of being a Coolie was historically constituted, and was

neither fixed nor stable. See Ghosh 1999, 67 ixChatterjee and Das Gupta 1981, 44-46 xSiddique 1985, 86 xiDas 1931, 29-40 xiiVarma 2011, 191 xiiiIbid., 192 xivSen 1997, 60 xvReport of Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the State and Prospects of Tea Cultivation in Assam, Cachar

and Sylhet, , 1868, Calcutta xviHandbook of Caste and Tribes Employed on Tea Estates in North East India (Calcutta: Indian Tea Association,

1924), 5 xviiList Handbook of Caste and Tribes Employed on Tea Estates in North East India (Calcutta: Indian Tea Association,

1924), 5 of Serious Cases of Assault on Tea Gardens of Assam, Revenue A, 77-117, August 1904, Assam State

Archives(henceforth ASA) xviiiBehal and Mohapatra 1992, 31-33




xixLetter from P.G. Meltius, Commissioner of the Assam Valley Districts to the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner

of Assam, dated 6 May 1904, Revenue A, 77-117, August 1904, Assam State Archives (ASA) xxLetter from B.C. Allen, Chief Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Assam to Secretary to Government of India,

Home Department, Police Branch, March 1916, F. No. 103, Part B, National Archives of India (henceforth NAI) xxiVarma in Pati ed., 201 xxiiLetter from W.J. Reid to Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, Police Branch, June 1914, F. No.

67, Part B, NAI xxiiiVarma in Pati ed., 202 xxivResolution on Immigrant Labour in Assam for the year 1918-1919 xxvHome Department, Police Branch, August 1914, Nos. 120-22, NAI xxviLetter from L.J. Kershaw, Financial Secretary to the Government of India to Secretary to Government of India

dated 2 March 1910, Home Department, Police Branch, March 1910, F. No.. 20, Part B, NAI xxviiHome Department, Police Branch, April 1917, No. 26, Part B, NAI

Education

INDENTURED LABOUR IN THE COLONIAL TEA PALANTATIONS OF ASSAM: A SAGA OF EXPLOITATION, SUFFERINGS AND COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE